


If I Break the Glass

by Meddalarksen



Series: 30 AU Challenge - Natasha [7]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - The Little Mermaid Fusion, Gen, Little Mermaid Retelling, Well that's the best tag I have for it anyhow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 07:39:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12271920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meddalarksen/pseuds/Meddalarksen
Summary: We’ve all heard the story of how the little mermaid gave up her tongue in exchange for legs. The reason is always different, was it because she was in love or was it for her own soul found through love? The ending is different too, does she find that love or does she become a daughter of air seeking her soul through joyous children for three hundred years?What if I told you that neither was true? Come, sit down, to find the answer we have to go back to where all such tales begin.Once upon a time in a land far away….





	If I Break the Glass

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Lindsey Stirling's Shatter Me

 

Natasha had finally been allowed to rise to the surface, to see what the world above held. When she did so she found that the sun was warm, the sky was so like a glass and the birds sang whatever they wished. She also found that the seas at the surface could be unkind: wild and cruel. As with all of these tales a prince of a kingdom by the sea was thrown overboard into the tossing sea during a fell storm. She swam him to shore and retreated, hiding from sight until a group of young women came down from the large white building with the pealing bells. It was they, not the prince, that made Natasha consider what the land must truly be like.

It was these women who caused Natasha to arm herself with a shark-tooth knife and go to seek out the magic needed to make herself walk. She had learned much in her time under the waves, few though those years had been, and she longed to walk, to feel the sun, to love the land rather than the sea. The sea was in her mind and in her heart, but the sun was where her soul lay and more and more her heart turned toward the rolling hills and the pealing bells of the shore.

When the polyps outside the sea witch’s home reached out, wishing to strangle her as they had others before, Natasha cut through their fingers and swam straight. When the desolation around the bone cottage encroached, she sang. It was the song that brought the sea witch from her cottage and she perched herself on an outcropping of bone, considering the mermaid.

“I once had a voice like yours. This house is built of those who came too close to it. What do you come here for, child?”

Natasha placed her knife at her side and stopped before the witch, “I wish to walk upon the shore, to feel the sun and love the land as I have loved the sea.”

“What you ask for is too much even for my magic. I can grant you legs, but that love is your task. And the price will not be slight for my own blood is needed.”

Holding her knife out to the witch, Natasha nodded, “I will pay it.”

“The sea will never welcome you back, no matter how you fare. And the land will not keep you should you fail,” the witch warned, earning another nod and a firmer presentation of the knife.

“I understand. I wish to walk upon the shore.”

“I do not grant blessings, only pain and that at a cost.”

“I will pay it,” Natasha said, for she had prepared and resolved long before she reached the cottage.

“Your voice will no longer serve you. Your grace will remain but every step you take until you find something to love on the land as you have loved the sea will feel as though your feet are being cut to shreds. You will look for relief but will only find it in the sea which birthed you and now rejects you as her child. The potion I will give you is to be drunk upon the shore. It will rend your tail and give you legs and it will be pain such as you have never known. If you pay this price, you shall have three moon cycles in which to find something to love as you have loved the sea. If you cannot find that, your voice will remain beneath the waves as surely as shall I. In three years’ time if you still love nothing as you have loved the sea she will call you home and you will go to the rest that awaits all mermaids and dissolve to sea foam. If, however, you find something to love with all the love of the seas, you will live long but you will always grieve your first love.”

Natasha drew her shoulders back and nodded once, “I accept.”

The witch watched her for a long moment before she sighed and nodded, retreating with Natasha’s knife into the cottage. She returned soon after holding a vial in which it appeared that galaxies swirled. Holding it in one hand she motioned Natasha forward with her other. When Natasha came within reach, the witch curled her free hand around Natasha’s throat, “This voice, I keep for three moons and forever after should you not find your love.”

When she shoved the vial into Natasha’s hand and drew back, there was a soft golden glow in her hand and she disappeared back into the cottage before Natasha could stop her. Natasha massaged her throat before she turned toward the distant surface and swam.

It was only once she reached the shore below the white building with the pealing bells that she unstoppered the vial and drank it down. The witch’s words came back to her as the pain coursed through her tail from tip to her waist. The blinding agony tore through her as her tail was rent in two leaving her with a pair of perfectly formed human legs.

The pain eased under the light of the full moon as the tide came in, lapping first at her feet, her ankles, until she was submerged once again to her waist. Her first home, her first love, her first heart eased her pain, smoothing away what remained of the mermaid’s scales. She stumbled to her feet in the surf, her feet sore with newness but no more than that until she reached the dry sand where the pain nearly sent her to her hands and knees. Her red hair fell around her face as she bent almost double.

Drawing the deepest breath she ever had, the daughter of the sea straightened and made her way across the sand toward the white building she could see on the hill. Each step sent pain racing up her legs from the soft soles of her feet, through her ankles and past the joint of her knee. She never once looked toward the waves that seemed to reach after her.

At dawn when the girls of the convent school intended to go down to the sea they found Natasha sitting completely bare on the top step of the stairs to the beach, her gaze fixed out over the sea and her hand curled around the stem of a rosebush which grew by the door.

They took her inside and saw that she was fed and clothed. She stayed with them until her voice remained below the sea, learning their language and how to read it, though she knew she would never speak it for there was nothing in that place that she loved as she had loved the sea. She made what they called friends and she called sisters, but the sea was too great to be encompassed in such words and so she left, promising herself that when the three years had passed she would return to them before the sea called her back.

For if she could find nothing to love in the place that drew her from the sea, where might she find it?

She traveled lightly, carrying nothing but a small purse of coin and a knife. She rode with farmers, walked when she had to and traveled for many a day. Never did she find something to love as she loved the sea and as the first year came to a close she retreated to the cold of the mountains and their icy lakes.

Her second year she spent far from the salt of the water that had been her home. It was during that time that she found the truth of the shore. That there were people even on land who would give anything to find a new home, though few had as obliging a witch as she had found. Then there were those who hadn’t __chosen__  to give up what they did not have. She traveled for a time with the sharpest-eyed hunter she had yet met even among the seamen and creatures she had known in the depths. He spoke enough for both of them and she listened well for two. But she once again continued on her way for she did not love something as she had loved the sea.

She curled the memory of those moon cycles close to her heart, weaving them with her time at the convent and promised that if the Sea gave her enough time she would see him again before returning to the foam. She added to what she carried, stories she could never voice but which she kept with her as an oyster closes around a pearl.

As the second year came to an end she spent her time on the wide plains where the winds swept from all directions and dancing hurt forever and a day because there was no saltwater to soothe her feet.

Her third year dawned as all other days had, and Natasha knew that there was still nothing she loved as she had the Sea to which she would always belong.

That year she met a soldier. A man whose young face didn’t match his ancient eyes. A man who had been cursed to live until he had righted the wrongs he saw. In him Natasha found another friend. She didn’t stay with him long, but she kept their time close as she wove slowly back toward shore.

Each person she met, each place she went, she added to the garden around her heart. She met the hunter again a month before the third year drew to an end and let him stay at her side as she returned to the convent. They arrived the day before her time was to end and she was surprised to find a number of the girls she had met in her travels there, waiting with those she had known before.

When she rose early the next morning, before the moon had set and the sun had risen, she found the gate by the grounds keeper’s hut blocked by the hunter. He didn’t say anything, his silence alone speaking volumes as he fell in beside her. They made their quiet way down to the shore and she dipped her feet into the sea for the first time in nearly three years.

As the sun rose, Natasha breathed out, certain it was at last over even as she heard a curse behind her. In front of her a shape was outlined by the rising sun. It was the sea witch perched on a rock some distance from shore. Her pale hair draped all around her, cascading over her lap and her black tail, “Well, little one, you’ve come through three years. Do you yet love the sea more?”

Natasha frowned for that had not been the agreement.

“You remember the words well, child. Do you love something as you love the sea?”

Natasha slowly shook her head, knowing the truth in her action and she could feel the sea beginning to roil around her ankles.

“You have had three years, little mermaid. How could you have found __nothing__?”

Natasha hesitated, trying to convey that she had found nothing because she had found too much. There were the months with the convent and all they had taught her. There was the sharp sting of the cold mountain waters as she dove into them, seeing how long she could swim now that she had no tail. There was the warmth of the sun int he fields of long grass. There was the way the hunter spoke until Natasha was sure he would run out of words and yet he could also be so still, so silent when he needed to be: as he was now. Natasha was sure that if she turned to look she would see him with his bow drawn over her shoulder.

There was the soldier who saw so many wrongs in need of justice and the smith she had found who had magic in his eyes and strength in his hands. Everyone she had met had crafted her story with her and everything she had seen had showed her how much the land could be. She opened her mouth for the first time in years, a useless movement and she had never been one for those, trying to explain and then just shook her head.

She could not say that she loved any one thing as she had loved the sea for it had been her first home, but she could say that she loved everything she had found on the land because it had built her a home.

The witch watched her for a long moment, an enigmatic smile on her face before she nodded once and dove off of the rock, disappearing into the sea.

The waves stilled and the birds began to sing the song of morning.

“What. The hell,” Natasha heard an arrow being returned to a quiver.

For the first time in three years, Natasha laughed.


End file.
